Orlando massacre: The shooter was an American

As shocking as they are, mass shootings have become as 'American as apple pie'. Rather than looking for external reasons behind Florida shooter's behaviour, the country needs to do some deep soul-searching, writes Mohammed Fairouz.

A woman cries in front of a makeshift memorial to remember the victims of a mass shooting in Orlando. Credit: Andres Kudacki/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.In the early
hours of Sunday morning, a young aquaintance through my inner circle of friends was shot and
killed in Orlando. He was 32 years old. I saw his mother crying on TV.

I am
incandescent with rage and overcome with grief.

I have never
held a gun in my life and I probably never will. I do not feel as though I'm
missing out on anything. No civilian needs an assault rifle. Period.

The shooter
was not a ‘US citizen of Afghan descent’ as the press describes him. It’s a
passable description on a technical level, but it is not a fundamentally true
one. He was a Floridian and an American. The town in which he was born, New
York City, is as American as apple pie. The Florida town in which he was
raised is as American as apple pie. The assault weapon that he used to kill
those people is as American as apple pie.

We have to
acknowledge this. We have to look in the mirror and admit that we have a
problem and we have to fix our problem.

The men who drafted the US Constitution
understood that, like all functioning constitutions in the world, it would need
to be a dynamic document. The founders were also men who, naturally, made
mistakes with that document; mistakes like enshrining slavery into the original
version. It took a bloody civil war to fix that mistake. But laws are made by us:
flawed, mortal, human beings. And that is why they are in need of constant
study, revision and change.

The men who advocated the right to
bear arms in 1791 could not possibly have imagined the weapons that are
available to us in 2016. They simply didn't have to weigh the moral possibility
of one man walking into a room and being able to massacre 49 others and injure
scores more. The Second Amendment has evolved into a national suicide note. It
needs to be re-examined and repealed.

The Republicans are no longer a political party. They have grown into a cancer that infects the body-politic of this nation.

I am sad
because I know that this won't happen.

If ever I
expected our problem to be fixed, it was in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy
Hook school shooting, when a young man killed 20 six and seven-year olds and
six adults. But even the senseless slaughter of those people did not deter
most members of one of our major political parties, the Republicans, and a good
number in the other – the Democrats – from continuing to indiscriminately
advocate the availability of weapons of war to the general population.

The Republicans
are no longer a political party. They have grown into a cancer that infects the
body-politic of this nation. They have failed at the most basic task of
governance – which is to protect their citizens. Instead they have invested in
creating an environment that is the result of an unholy combination of guns and
hate.

Former Republican presidential
candidate Marco Rubio
called the shooter an “animal”. This is the same junior senator who has voted consistently
against every gun safety measure, meaning the shooter was able to walk into
Walmart and buy a semi-automatic weapon. The presumptive nominee of the
Republican Party, Donald Trump, also has no right to condemn this attack or say
anything about it after committing time and again to actively undo
any progress that gay people in this country have made towards equality, like
attacking same-sex marriage.

One of the most confusing statements
came from Orlando’s Mayor
Buddy Dyer: “Today we’re dealing with something that we never imagined and is
unimaginable”. There is hardly a phenomenon in the United States of America
that is as tragically predictable. Senator Chris Murphy, who represents the
community of Newtown, Connecticut where the Sandy Hook shooting took place recently
attacked lawmakers’ inaction on gun control and referred to the “phenomenon of
near constant mass shootings” in America. It has become a part of daily
life.

People push them around, bully them and hurt them – even kill them.

The sad thing
is that, in all statistical likelihood, this will happen again tomorrow.

I know from my experiences in north Florida that the environment that the
people at Pulse nightclub lived in. They grew up in one of the most parochial
and often bigoted parts of the United States. People push them around, bully
them and hurt them – even kill them. Then they go to the one big space in
Orlando where they are supposed to feel safe and free to express themselves.
And this happens. Their sense of security is violated.

Maybe the gun
laws won't change. Maybe they can't. But I have one plea: don't let the
politicians who have been preaching against the gay community hijack this for
their political gain. They are part of the problem.

When I looked
at pictures of the shooter he looked like something out of reality TV show Jersey
Shore. A selfie-taking homophobic bully who seemed as insecure, thin-skinned
and immature as so many young angry Americans are today. He may have been
infatuated by ‘romantic’ notions of some terrorist group abroad. But he was an
American. He was ‘one of us’: a symptom of our problem. Watering this down doesn't work.
Many publications have been referring to him as an ‘American
terrorist’. The rest should follow suit and our politicians also need to call
it like it is. Pretending that Omar Mateen was not an American is not going to
help us solve the problem, nor insist that all criminals like him are held as accountable to American laws as the rest of the country. The rhetoric of denial about the idea of a homegrown American terrorist reminds
me of President Reagan’s statement: “I didn't have cancer. I had something
inside me that had cancer and it was removed”. Denial doesn't help. It just
makes the disease harder to recognize and more difficult to cure.

My friend and
colleague David Ignatius recently wrote of Donald Trump: “He
rightly said Monday that Muslims need to work with law enforcement to report
dangerous people. But he doesn't seem to understand that his many months of
Muslim-bashing comments have made that cooperation harder. He has been tossing
matches into a pool of gasoline. Good law enforcement and, yes, cooperation
from Muslims have helped prevent more attacks like those in San Bernardino and
Orlando.

It's
breathtaking that a serious presidential candidate would call on a sitting
president to resign following a terrorist attack, because ‘He doesn't get it or
he gets it better than anybody understands.’ What's that supposed to mean, if
not a slur against Obama's loyalty?

You don't have to look far in the United States to find law-abiding American Muslims

Trump
displays a level of irresponsibility that should worry Americans, not just
because his statements are immoral and unconstitutional, but because they put
the country at greater risk.”

There is much wisdom to David’s analysis but
you don't have to look far in the United States to find law-abiding American
Muslims. You will find them in communities throughout America, working for the
nation on Capitol Hill, fighting and dying for their country in the US Armed
Forces and leading American culture, commerce and diplomacy. And if you had
looked you would have found what remained of countless innocent American
Muslims in the rubble of the Twin Towers where they perished on 9/11 together
with their fellow Americans on a fateful day that they, like all the other
innocent victims, thought was just going to be a regular workday at the office.

So no, it is not only American
Muslims that have to cooperate with law enforcement. All Americans are obliged
to live by the law of the land. Even Donald Trump has to abide by the law and
show some respect for the Constitution from time to time. And with all due
respect to my colleague, Trump understands what he is doing when he incites
divisiveness in a nation that is as diverse as the United States of America. He
is not stupid. From Chicago, Illinois to Birmingham, Alabama he has
deliberately incited violence and proven that he is calculating rather than stupid. That is
much, much worse.

I know that
introspection and challenging this country's own ‘party of hate’ is harder than looking for external reasons for the shooter’s behavior. But
it's important that we do this. I believe that America is strong enough to
withstand deep soul-searching and come out stronger. But I do not believe that
any mother should ever be expected to withstand the loss of her son to such
senseless violence.

I send
healing to the families of the victims today. I've cried but not as much as
they have and will. But I also fully realise that my prayers and tears and
Senate’s ‘moments of silence’ will not stitch the life back into the mother who
wants her little boy back: the mother who in tearful confusion pleaded on TV for the return of her son during those long early hours when he was still unaccounted for. In those hours, my friends and I wondered if he was still alive. We made calls in the dark night holding onto hope for a faint distant light. And when the inevitable confirmation came, it hit us like a sledgehammer despite the fact that we all knew deep inside it was coming. I hope that we one day reach a point in this country
where parents will never have to hand presidential candidates pictures of their
children who have been shot and killed in the most senseless, incomprehensible
and insurmountably tragic way possible.

About the author

Mohammed Fairouz, born in 1985, is one of the most frequently performed, commissioned, and recorded composers of his generation. His large-scale symphonies, operas and oratorios all engage major geopolitical and philosophical themes. He lives in New York City and tweets at @MohammedFairouz.

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